Cost analysis

Medical costs, patient costs and productivity losses will be included in the evaluation. The medical costs cover the costs of surgery, anaesthesia, theatre, perioperative materials, inpatient stay at the ICU and the wards and medications. The patient costs include out-of-the pocket expenses like over-the-counter medication and healthcare related travel costs. Productivity losses are costs resulting from being absent and decreased productivity during work.

Hospital healthcare utilisation will be retrieved from case report forms (CRF) and hospital information systems. Data on out-of-hospital healthcare will be gathered with the iMTA Medical Consumption Questionnaire adjusted to the study setting. The productivity losses will be documented with the iMTA Productivity Cost Questionnaire. Questions on out-of-pocket expenses will be added to these patient questionnaires. Patients will be asked to fill in questionnaires at 1 week, 6 weeks, 6, 12 and 24 months after inclusion in the study.

Costs will be price indexed based on Consumer Price Indices. Costs will be calculated for individual patients as the product sum of the resource use and the respective unit costs.